Monday, October 14, 2013

Free Korg MS-20 Ableton Instruments

Korg's MS-20 Mini has quickly become one of the biggest synths of 2013. Maybe even THE biggest synth of 2013.

With its full-figured filters and a semi-modular approach to sound design, the MS-20 has a sound that's so beefy and unique that it's earned a very special place in my studio.

Having tinkered with it for the better part of the summer, I figured it was time for another six-pack of Simpler patches. Since the MS-20's filters are so distinctive, I focused on their sound as the basis for these presets.

The MS-20 instruments in the file are as follows:

Ring Fizz - Combining the MS20's ring mod (using a major third interval) with super-resonant filters resulted in this nasty patch. Check out the freaky aliasing in the top octaves.

Reso Square - I tuned the filters to match the square wave oscillators, which added a light quiver to the overall tone.

Res Saw Interval - Interval tuning on a pair of sawtooth oscillators, again with the resonance cranked for additional harmonic emphasis.

Noise Square - Using the MS20's patch bay, I modulated the filter cutoff with some white noise. Dirty.

Filter Frenzy - With the filter resonance adding some "ghost" tones, I dropped one of the oscillators by an octave to increase the low-end content. For some serious boom, lower the cutoff frequency on this Simpler patch.f

Detuned Pulse - A pair of pulse waves detuned with the lowpass open and the highpass subtly boosting the lows.

As usual, the instruments are in default mode, with filtering, LFOs and envelopes off, so you can use them as starting points for your own sounds.

With all of the modulation and detuning going on, looping was a challenge, so I took longer samples to capture the character a bit more accurately

Note 1: If you like any of these sounds and want to keep them for future tracks, just click the little save button in the upper right corner of the Simpler and add it to your library (it will copy the waves too).

Note 2: If you don't use Ableton and just want the C3 samples, you can download the file and fish the waves out of the "Samples" folder, then use them in your DAW or sampler of choice.